Twelve teams head into the final day of NBA Cup group-stage games with a chance to join the Toronto Raptors and Los Angeles Lakers in the knockout round. <\/p>\n
Three group titles will be determined directly through head-to-head matchups, while the final result in East Group C will affect three teams. <\/p>\n
The best second-place team in each conference still has to be decided. Only a handful of teams are eligible to advance as the best second-place team due to the head-to-head matchups that will eliminate a few teams on Friday.<\/p>\n
Updated 2025 NBA Cup Standings<\/p>\n
Toronto (4-0; +55 point differential)Cleveland (2-1; +33)Washington (1-2; -44)Atlanta (1-2; -11)Indiana (0-3; -33)Orlando (3-0; +61)Detroit (2-1; +24)Boston (2-2; -17)Brooklyn (1-2; -17)Philadelphia (0-3; -51)Miami (3-1; +49)New York (2-1; +26)Milwaukee (2-1; +13)Chicago (1-2; -42)Charlotte (0-3; -46)Oklahoma City (3-0; +71)Phoenix (3-0; +35)Minnesota (2-2; +45)Sacramento (0-3; -57)Utah (0-3; -94)Los Angeles Lakers (3-0; +36)Memphis (2-1; +9)Los Angeles Clippers (2-1; -15)Dallas (1-2; -11)New Orleans (0-4; -19)Denver (2-1; +26)San Antonio (2-1; +23)Houston (2-2; +14)Portland (2-2; -31)Golden State (1-3; -32)<\/p>\n
East Group B, West Group A and West Group C will be decided by head-to-head matchups. <\/p>\n
Orlando-Detroit, Oklahoma City-Phoenix and Denver-San Antonio will be winner-take-all games on Friday night. <\/p>\n
East Group C will be determined by whichever team wins the Milwaukee-New York matchup at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
If the Knicks win, they claim the group title through the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Miami Heat.<\/p>\n
If the Bucks win, the Heat go through as the group winner by way of their Wednesday victory over Milwaukee. The Bucks would have to hope to get through as the best second-place team in the Eastern Conference in that scenario.<\/p>\n
The Cleveland Cavaliers are currently in the best position to move on as the top second-place team. They need to beat the Atlanta Hawks and run up the point differential. <\/p>\n
Cleveland is incentivized to win big, though, because both Miami and Orlando could drop into the best second-place competition.<\/p>\n
Miami has a +49 point differential that is locked in after four group-stage games. If the Knicks win East Group C, Cleveland and potentially Orlando would have to beat Miami’s point differential. <\/p>\n
Detroit and Milwaukee can only advance as group winners because they would both have two losses with defeats on Friday.<\/p>\n
The knockout-round math in the Western Conference is even simpler. <\/p>\n
Denver-San Antonio is a knockout game. The winner takes West Group C and the loser is eliminated. <\/p>\n
The OKC-Phoenix winner claims first in West Group A. The loser is in competition to be the best second-place team in the West. <\/p>\n
Over in West Group B, the Memphis Grizzlies play the Los Angeles Clippers in a game where the winner is still alive to advance as the best second-place team.<\/p>\n
However, Memphis’ point differential sits at +9, while the Clippers are at -15. The Suns are +35.<\/p>\n
Phoenix needs a close loss to OKC to avoid a late surge from the Grizzlies or Clippers to take its spot in the knockout round. <\/p>\n
The Suns, Grizzlies and Clippers are the only teams in contention to be the top second-place team in the West because the Denver-San Antonio loser is eliminated and all the other teams in the West groups have been knocked out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve teams head into the final day of NBA Cup group-stage games with a chance to join the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-317007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}